beltzak
macrumors regular
Like iOS 26 doesn’t have security vulnerabilities, maybe even more than iOS 18 that clearly is more polished.
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Apple Reveals How Many iPhones Are Running iOS 26
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Luckily I still have one of my 16 Pro Max phones still on iOS 18 because I have had to switch to it in order to use wireless CarPlay in my car. iOS 26 works for a week or two and then I have to reset my cars system and re-pair to get it to work for another week or two. iOs 18 is fine. I have the same problem on Both 17 Pro Max phones I have.
beltzak
macrumors regular
That’s not even close to the truth.
100% of all iPhones have security flaws.
Actually if I was interested in criminal activities I would target iOS 26 devices for obvious reasons. The success of such activities would be guaranteed.
I've never met a lottery winner. Does this imply that there are none?
beltzak
macrumors regular
Very true that photos sucks as hell (iOS 18 here). What a shame has Apple become in such a short period of time.
I wouldn’t ever guessed that 5 years ago.
So you're saying the chances of being a victim of exploits is like the odds of winning the lottery? I'm pretty safe then. Thanks for that...i'm no longer worried AT ALL!
At least in iOS 18 I could search my photos for certain things and I got results. iOS 26, I'm not as lucky. It seems AI (or whatever Apple uses to index photos) "sucks as hell" in 26. I used to be able to view my photos by year or see a map of the world and it shows my pictures from wherever I was...can't figure out how to do that in the new Photos26 app...it's sad, really.
iOS 26 is so incredibly buggy and user unfriendly, and Liquid Glass is such a bust, I was expecting a lot less, too.
iTattoo
macrumors regular
In the past I've preached to wait until the .1 update (16.1, 17.1, 18.1 etc) and this year did the same with 26. The difference is that even with 26.2 it was a buggy mess. As former early adopter, I will now stay on the sidelines and wait and watch here. I'll be part of the naughty list next year for those that aren't running 27 after several months. As software gets more and more complex, the annual update cycle with such a rigid schedule is partly at issue. I'd much prefer Apple to release a full update less regularly, and produce something that 'just works' as was the mantra for years.
klasma
macrumors G4
Must have been Tomb Raider that was released that day.
Every iOS update is being signed individually for the unique device it’s being installed on, so why are they using App Store transactions?
pdaholic
macrumors 68020
iPadOS 26 is the only one that still bugs me. A swipe in the wrong spot in windowed mode moves the whole window, which drives me nuts. I’ve gone to using full screen apps as a consequence. I really miss iPadOS 18 split screen with the old slide over.
They may be “real [Apple] figures” but they are useless figures because they are not real adoption numbers. Devices don’t make upgrade decisions, users do — some users were sort of tricked into upgrading. The only way to get closer to the real OS 26 adoption rate is to obtain the % of OS 26 compatible devices that did not ship with it and are actually running it now. To get any valid indication of the acceptance rate, an independent agency would have to conduct a survey with a large enough sample of users who are familiar with OS 26 and its recent predecessors.
The “real world” for me is “different” now because my iPad came with 26 which made navigating, scanning, and reading considerably more strenuous than any upgrade before. Objectively and on a daily basis so, that drawback is indeed obnoxious.
I will envy users in Europe, if hopefully soon the EUC mandates that Apple, Google, and cohorts enable one-generation downgrades and maintain security updates over several OS gens. The latter is a security protection which Apple is known to support (and market) vehemently — surely, they would not object. I have no hope that Apple will be forced to offer either service here.
Excuse my attitude please…
Obviously I have disabled app updates / auto app updates. On my phone… on my IPad… on my MBP. I want zero interaction with new Apple software until that group gets as focused on delivering excellence and quality as the Apple Hardware team is.
And I tell others I know to do the same, but of course they are the masters of their own domains.
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66 percent of all iPhones are running iOS 26… less than 50 percent voluntarily.
57 percent of all iPads are running iPadOS 26… less than 40 percent voluntarily.
🤣🤣🤣
57 percent of all iPads are running iPadOS 26… less than 40 percent voluntarily.
🤣🤣🤣
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It’s not accurate. iPhone 17 from the hardware side is a great phone and many people bought this model due to refresh rate. My question is – how would it look if we delete all iPad Pro M5, Series 11, Ultra 3, Air and 17 and 17 Pros.
-BigMac-
macrumors 68030
🙋🏻♂️ I tried DFU restore 2days after they stopped signing. To say I was annoyed when I found out they had deliberately made the last OS update OTA so theres no IPSW to restore - is an understatement.
Shirasaki
macrumors P6
Cue Apple forcing older unsupported devices to be unusable by remotely bricking their older iPhones.
Shirasaki
macrumors P6
I am proudly the minority running iOS older than 26, also iPadOS, also macOS. I’m not going to update if I still have any level of agency remaining. If Apple remotely bricks my device and won’t let me in unless I upgrade then, that’s a different matter entirely.
To show how much power Apple has over its user base and how pushy and forceful Apple has become.
Bet the number is much higher because Apple picks only happy users to survey, then brag about 99% satisfaction rate, iOS 26 is the perfectest software ever created, etc.
Abazigal
Contributor
I hear this a lot. Isn't the issue that iOS patches typically contain security fixes (which in turn telegraph the security flaws in iOS devices for those enterprising enough to look for them). Therefore, if criminals were able to roll the software version of an iOS device back to an older version, they could then in theory take advantage of those known vulnerabilities to further compromise your device?
I kinda get why Apple doesn't permit this. No doubt, there are some people who would be better off if they, say, updated their phone and then regretted it (because of the hit to performance or it changed some things they didn't like) and could subsequently downgrade. But it also seems bad for society as a whole if anybody could do this to any Apple device out there.
Correct me if my take on this issue is incorrect.
That said, I have no idea whether the percentages released by Apple are good or bad. But I do have several friends who are never in any hurry to upgrade, I will give them the heads up whenever Apple releases a new patch, and to each their own, I suppose.
-BigMac-
macrumors 68030
Even past iOS versions can get critical security patches.
To roll back an iCloud linked device using any method will require iCloud unlocking at first instance. If the hacker already knows that and can unblock the device and already has physical access - there would be little point to g to the trouble of reverting and go through extra complicated steps.
The only reason I can summise Apple more or less immediately stopps signing is to force people to stay on the new software - even if they hate it. It makes Apples update numbers look better.
As you can see in this post - they like showing off the update numbers👍🏼🤣
Whatever you love or hate about iOS 26, the fact is that the substantial majority of adoption is driven by when Apple sets chunks of users to get auto-update notifications, and that doesn't happen on launch day.
So IF the timeline (in terms of "days after release when X% of users were presented with an automatic update notification") was identical between iOS 26 and 18, then yes, adoption is somewhat slower due to the 3 week offset.
But IF--and I don't have any insight into this--Apple delayed pushing auto-update notifications for iOS 26 to the majority of users by, say, 3 weeks relative to iOS 18, then the effective adoption rate would be nearly identical.
Maybe Apple waited three weeks to publish statistics because they wanted the numbers to look similar, or maybe they waited 3 weeks because they delayed pushing updates to the majority of users by an extra 3 weeks. Point here only being that without knowing what the auto-update notification schedule differential between 26 and 18 is, relative comparisons of adoption speed are of limited use.
So IF the timeline (in terms of "days after release when X% of users were presented with an automatic update notification") was identical between iOS 26 and 18, then yes, adoption is somewhat slower due to the 3 week offset.
But IF--and I don't have any insight into this--Apple delayed pushing auto-update notifications for iOS 26 to the majority of users by, say, 3 weeks relative to iOS 18, then the effective adoption rate would be nearly identical.
Maybe Apple waited three weeks to publish statistics because they wanted the numbers to look similar, or maybe they waited 3 weeks because they delayed pushing updates to the majority of users by an extra 3 weeks. Point here only being that without knowing what the auto-update notification schedule differential between 26 and 18 is, relative comparisons of adoption speed are of limited use.
That isn't actually what I said (or meant to imply). Only that because you haven't experienced it it doesn't mean it's a grand conspiracy.
But just for kicks (I was curious):
There are apparently ~180 lotteries world wide. Assuming 1,000,000,000 people play (I chose this number because that's 1/3 of the iPhones ever sold, this seems reasonable-ish), the odds of winning any given lottery are 1 in 2,000,000 (some are more, some less), and each lottery is weekly (lots of the smaller lotteries are daily or in some places twice daily, but let's roll with weekly); then for any given drawing of one lottery you'd expect ~500 people to win. Multiply that by the number of lotteries (180) and drawings (52) and you'd expect about 4,680,000 lottery winners each year. Put another way, each resident of Louisiana would win once.
On the one hand, the odds of winning a lottery are not great (about 0.4%, 1 in 214 of the original population). On the other, not keeping your phone secure is like buying multiple tickets. On the third hand, my math or reasoning could be way wrong. 🙂
To be clear: upgrade or don't, it matters not a whit to me. But maybe also look at it from Apple's point of view: a headline announcing that 4M iPhones had been compromised is probably more of a driver for keeping up with security than any sort of planned obsolesce.
Rockanrolero
macrumors member
When giving the numbers of all devices running iOS 26, are these all devices able to run it or all active devices no matter their capacity to run the OS? 🤔
Because obviously all phones released in the last four years are able to.
Because obviously all phones released in the last four years are able to.
I7guy
macrumors Westmere
99.9% of thing powered by firmware, microcode or software have bugs and/or security flaws.